The Sisters and the Saints
by Anonymous In Love
Summary: His final words to her were "Find your sister. Find the Saints." Two years later, Scarlett's tracked the infamous twins to New York, but her sister is nowhere to be found. Why did her father send her to find the saints and what is she supposed to do now?
1. Find Your Sister Find The Saints

I don't own it. I didn't make it. I have nothing to do with it's conception and am in no way affiliated with it.

**Find Your Sister. Find The Saints.**

There are a lot of things that go through your head in the moments before you die. Your loves, your regrets, your happiest memories. The baseball game you and your brother went to. The time you got lost in the woods on purpose. The smell of your mother's hand lotion when she'd hold you tight in a hug. Losing your virginity to a boy named Scott.

God damn, had that been a mistake.

The day you fell in love. Did you leave the iron on?

At least, that was what Elizabeth had always heard. It was what happened in the movies, right?

So the fact that Elizabeth Connolly was on her knees, staring down the barrel of a gun, her heart pounding in her chest and her ears strangely deaf, and the fact that nothing – not a single thought of any kind – flashed through her mind... well, that was probably a good sign. And Elizabeth?

She could use some good karma at that moment. That she didn't believe in silly little things like god or karma, or even that the Red Sox would win the game later that day, and that even if she did, it wasn't like Elizabeth had ever really done anything in her entire life to tip the scale of the universe in her favor in her supposed final few moments, did not enter into the equation.

Because they simply didn't have the time to. "I'll give you one more chance." Elizabeth inwardly shuddered at the sound of the voice that boomed down at her. She looked up at it's owner shakily, knowing the words that were coming. Words that could have potentially meant her freedom, but that probably weren't going to make a difference anyway. She had reached the end of her life. She ought to make peace with that. "Tell me where the money is." she was commanded.

The money... Elizabeth could have laughed. Right there, in the face of the man ready to take her life. She could have opened her mouth and laughed. A deep, crazed laugh from the very core of whatever soul she had left. It always came back to money, didn't it? Not that Elizabeth didn't like money. She _loved_ money.

She loved the heavy smell that got stuck in your nostrils when you breathed it in. She loved the feel of cash stuffed in her bra for safe keeping. She loved the wrinkled faces on every bill, how they changed little details every year or two to make it harder to counterfeit. She loved the massive wad of cash stuffed in the bed pillow in her apartment – the one that the complete fucking moron with the gun in her face had just burned to the ground.

Oh, Elizabeth loved money with every fiber of her being. It was just that she no longer had any.

Though, if were honest with herself – and if she was going to die, then why the fuck not – then she wouldn't have given them the money anyway. Besides, thugs were greedy.

They should learn to enjoy the finer things in life, like flying a kite or having wild sex in a field on a moonlit night. She briefly considered suggesting it to him. Hey, she thought, do you really want to kill me? Wouldn't you rather be doing something fun and constructive with your time? Finding the secrets to the universe.

Maybe having a nice picnic? "I _don't_ have the money." she replied, skipping the parts on the finer points in life and cutting to the chase. This gun to the head thing was getting old, anyway. She had better things she could be doing.

She wondered if there was baseball in hell.

* * *

The phone call came early in the afternoon. The sun was shining, there was an icy breeze brushing the trees outside, and as usual, Scarlett was sharing a bed with a warm body whose name she didn't remember. She groaned and rolled over, her face meeting the bare chest of said nameless man, and she warily wondered what the time was and how anyone could be enough of an asshole to actually try and call her at such an ungodly hour.

Some people were just so rude.

She sighed and let the phone ring, her arms coming to wrap themselves around the well defined abs she'd claimed as her pillow. It was too early to take phone calls, she blearily thought to herself. Let the fuckers leave a message. If they weren't boring, she'd surely be able to get back to them later.

If she managed to find the time with that warm body beside her... "Good morning." She smiled, glancing up at a face she was happy to find she actually recognized. She made a mental note to lay off her usual celebratory vodka from now on, knowing she'd been making that note since her first year in high school and that she'd consistently ignored it ever since.

"Good morning to you." she replied, rubbing her body against the one beside her as she pulled herself up. Bright blue eyes belonging to a man named Anthony Meyers who had, until her job officially ended yesterday afternoon, been her client in yet another sleazy dirty photos case, grazed over her sheet clad body before coming to rest on her face.

"How did you sleep?" Anthony asked as he rubbed her bare back with his hand. It made Scarlett want to laugh.

"Sleep?" she asked with a sidewise grin. "Did we sleep? I must have missed that. I spent the night giving myself an excuse to buy a new bed." Anthony laughed. Scarlett pushed herself up, propping herself on her elbows for a moment as she climbed on top of him, straddling his hips. "You weren't off with another woman, were you?"

"Me? With another woman?" Anthony replied, feigning shock at her question. "You know there's only you."And that, in a nutshell, was why Scarlett hated cases with married couples.

Hell, why she hated married couples in general. Everyone's a liar and everyone betrays everyone else. Especially Scarlett. She already knew that with a certainty.

Quiet music played from a pair of battered speakers across the room, sounding broken and fragmented and, Scarlett thought to herself with a thrust of her hips, beautifully frayed to her ears. The phone rang again, followed by a clicking sound as the messaging system picked up. "...Miss Evans? This is Dr. Peretti at Boston Memorial. I'm calling about a Martin Winslowe--"

Scarlett immediately forgot what she'd been doing and rolled over, reaching for the phone from her bedside table. "This had better be goddamned fucking important." she growled. She scratched her head, causing her platinum blond hair to fall in her eyes, and waited for the person on the other end of the line to recover from her less than chipper greeting.

"Miss Evans?" the voice asked. "Miss Scarlett Evans?"

"Yes." she growled impatiently. "_What_?" There was another moment of silence.

"Do you know a man named Martin Winslowe?" Scarlett sighed and fell back down in the bed. It was a name she hadn't heard in a long time. Or maybe it was just a name she'd been pretending not to hear every day for the past seven years. Either way, it'd just come back to haunt her, just as it always did.

Just as she always knew it would. "Miss Evans?"

"_No_." Scarlett replied vehemently. Then, "He's my father." There were many thoughts that followed those words, but like most things with Scarlett, they never managed to escape her lips. "What's going on?"

"Your father was admitted to the hospital last night after he was attacked." Scarlett laughed into the phone. She couldn't help herself. Her father? Attacked?

What a joke. "Is he alright?" Scarlett asked. The other line was quiet, obviously put off by Scarlett's manner. Well, good, Scarlett thought.

"It's not good." the person said slowly. "He hasn't got very long. You might want to get down here as quickly as you can." The words took a moment to sink in. Scarlett had never heard such impossible words in her life.

And she worked part time for a tabloid that specialized in alien love children and the end of the world. "I'm coming." she resigned, hanging up the phone. She stared down at her hand, still clutching the phone, her eyes tracing the outlines of her fingers stoically as she tried to resolve the familiarly unfamiliar churning in her gut.

Something was going on. Something big and something bad.

Sighing, she slid off the bed, letting the sheet fall to the ground as she scanned the floor for her discarded clothes. Anthony watched her curiously, frowning. "What's going on?" he asked, sounding worried. Scarlett didn't pause to look at him as she slid on her panties and reached for her jeans.

"I have to go." Scarlett told him. She pulled on her jeans and grabbed a t-shirt from the pile of clothes in the corner. "You can let yourself out and mail me a check."

She didn't bother looking back as she grabbed her coat and walked out of her bedroom, making sure to stuff her keys in her coat pocket as she left and slammed her front door behind her. She stuffed her hands in her pockets as the cool wind blew against her, blowing her hair from her shoulders with every step she took toward the hospital. It was a short walk from her apartment.

Did she know Martin Winslowe, the doctor had asked. _Did_ she knew him? Scarlett doubted anyone could claim to know Martin Winslowe. Her mother certainly hadn't. Scarlett had spent most, if not her entire life, wishing that she'd never heard or spoken the name of Martin Winslowe once.

And so Martin Winslowe was a mystery, but the greater mystery to Scarlett Evans was why she should care. Just because she was related to him, that didn't make him part of her life. Just because he'd been there for most of her childhood, that didn't mean that he'd cared for her. Besides, there was more to being there than to simply _be there_.

Scarlett paused, laughing to herself. She was beginning to sound like her old shrink.

_That_ had certainly been a mistake.

Scarlett pressed on, crossing a street. It wasn't far now. She could feel her heart beating angrily with her every step, the past she'd been pretending had never happened coming dangerously close to colliding with her present. What was she doing? It wasn't as though she owed him anything. She shouldn't be there, she thought. She shouldn't rush to see him. Her stomach shouldn't flutter nervously at the idea of crossing the street to the main hospital building. She shouldn't care if he lived or died as she asked the woman behind the counter where he was. She shouldn't count every step as though it might be her last as she walked down the hallway toward the elevator.

She felt her heart grow cold as the doors closed and she pressed the button for the second floor. Her feet were like lead when the doors opened up, a new hallway in view, waiting to be traversed to her father's door. To his dying bedside.

Did she have it in her to face this?

It was a useless, unanswered question. The universe ignored it. Scarlett stepped out of the elevator, her feet finding their own way down the hall, moving her this way and that to avoid nurses and patients, crying loved ones waiting in chairs.

The lost ones who were always left behind.

She found the room easily enough. The door was closed most of the way and the curtain inside was drawn. Scarlett found herself making her way inside, curtains and door pushed from her mind as she laid eyes on a face much older than she remembered. So beaten and weathered, she thought to herself, she wasn't sure it was recognizable at all. She wasn't sure it could even have belonged to same man she'd known.

Maybe she'd gone down the wrong hallway, she thought for a moment. Maybe she was in the wrong room. Maybe she'd gotten the wrong floor.

But Scarlett knew that she hadn't. She knew that she was in the right place, for once in her sorry life. Whatever else she'd gotten wrong over the years, this was one of the few moments when she'd gotten things right. She was in the right hospital. She'd found the right hallway, on the right floor, and _this_ was her father's room.

She stared for a long moment, unable to help herself. She felt the air grow thinner, her heart beating too rapidly for her lungs to accept the air. "Daddy..."

The word had been unspoken for so long, it was no longer familiar to her lips. Her mouth worked strangely, the sound oddly _wrong_ to her ears, as her whisper hung in the air like smoke. One weary, glazed over eye blinked open, it's owner turning their head slowly through the narcotic induced state to stare at her. They were eyes Scarlett remembered so well, she had stared into them so often as a child.

But even they seemed distant. Even they seemed unfamiliar and wrong. Was it just time that had done this? Or was it the wound that had finally caused her father to meet with his fate? "Scar..." he said. Scarlett felt her heart go numb. She welcomed it. "You look just like your mother."

"What happened?" Scarlett asked, though she was sure she'd be better off not knowing. Keep your worlds separate, Scarlett scolded herself. He'd done it so well, accepted that distance for the both of them so easily. She could surely manage the same.

"I think..." Martin began, pausing awkwardly to cough and take a new breath. "I think I've finally met my end." His eyes closed, as if something in sleep was calling to him, then he looked at her again. "I tried hard, this time. I really did. If you only knew, Scar..." Scarlett frowned, refusing to acknowledge that something like tears behind her eyes.

"Knew what?" Scarlett prompted. He gave her a confused look.

"You have to find them, Scar." he whispered, his distant voice taking on a new strength. "You have to fix it." The beeping of the heart monitor was growing slow and faint, raising the alarm in Scarlett's voice when he closed his eyes.

"Fix what?" Scarlett asked, her voice sounding almost frantic. "Find who, Daddy? Find _who_?" She touched his arm lightly.

"Find your sister." he whispered through the gravel in his throat. "Find the Saints..."

The beeping on the monitor stopped and the loud bleating of a dead heart filled Scarlett's ears as a sleep that was final and endless beckoned the man she'd once known, or thought she knew, from her presence. A nurse came in, glancing at her uncertainly as she examined him.

They were the last words Martin Winslowe would ever say to anyone, and he had said them to her.

Find your sister, he'd said. Find the Saints.

…..what in god's name did that mean?

* * *

**A/N:** Okay, so I'm a little nervous about posting this. It's my first actual posted fic in.... ages and ages and ages. But I'm hoping someone will read it and maybe like it, though honestly I love my characters for this one, so I'm not sure that would really make much of a difference. The rating's not bad for this one, though it may go up. I'll figure that out when I get there. And don't worry, there's more coming _really_ soon. I have pages and pages of notes for this story.  
And remember, if you read it, take the time to review. I'll do the same.


	2. Now Who Might Ye Be?

I'm squealing in delight over all the wonderful readers and reviewers out there! I've been hiding for the past few days to multitask between my studying and writing this chapter! There's a long-ish note from me at the end, but in the meantime, enjoy reading, thanks for reading, and be warned that the MacManus' boys are in fine form today!

Oh, **and there a few spoilers as to BDS2** in this chapter. Don't read if you haven't seen it, unless you're really not worried, what with it coming out on DVD this week!!! I'm so going to be at the store at midnight and buy the first copy they put on the shelf and spend the next three months doing nothing but alternating between the two movies!

**Now Who Might Ye Be?**

Connor couldn't believe it. It wasn't possible. It was unfathomable. It was just... just... _wrong_! "Where the fuck is muh rope?" He dug around inside the pack he'd brought with him, looking for the missing rope. "'Ey, Murph!" Connor said, turning to him. "Did 'ya pack muh rope like I said ta?" Murphy looked up from loading his gun with an exasperated expression.

"Not again with the fuckin' rope." Murphy replied, shaking his head. "What the fuck do ya need rope for?" Connor looked up from his pack at his brother sharply, disbelief written clearly across his face.

"'What the fuck do we need rope for?'" Connor repeated. "Rope! Did ye not learn anything from the Yakavettas!" Connor scolded his brother as he went back to his digging. "_What the fuck do ya need rope for?_ You need rope because it's fuckin' rope! You dun't go 'round without any fuckin' rope! Get fuckin' killed!" Connor growled, tossing his bag to the side and scowling at Murphy. "There's no fuckin' rope in ta fuckin' bag!"

"Oh, would ya get off the fuckin' rope! We're in the middle of somethin', in case ya fergot!" Murphy told Connor with a scowl.

"'Course I didn't ferget! That's why we need the rope!" Connor said pointedly, glaring daggers at Murphy. He paused suddenly, pointing an accusatory finger at his brother. "Ye hid it, didn't ya!?" Murphy returned Connor's glare in annoyance. "Ye hid muh rope!"

"I didn't touch yer fuckin' rope!" Murphy shot back defensively. "What ta fuck would I want yer fuckin' rope for? And anyway, if I had done such a thing, it would've been fer yer own good! Yer too attached to that fuckin' rope!" Taking it with him everywhere, Murphy thought. He practically slept with it lately. It simply wasn't healthy!

"Too attached?" Connor asked in a serious voice. "_Too attached? _Ye can't be too fuckin' attached to fuckin' rope!" he cried, stamping his foot. "It's _rope_!" Murphy adjusted the silencer on his desert eagle, growing impatient with his brother.

"What the fuck's yer problem? Our first job in two years and all ya care about's yer fuckin' rope. We're s'pposed to be administerin' justice, here. Rightin' wrongs. We're doin' the lords' work." Murphy told Connor, trying to bring him back into focus with the task at hand. Smecker had been staking out the bar they were about to head into for the past three weeks, tracking the movements of a mafia boss known as "the Jackal". His real name was Alexander Sumarokov, and while he traded in things like drugs and prostitution, his specialty was numbers. Specifically, running them. The police had been trying to make a case on him for the past six years, but like all good mafia bosses, Sumarokov always had a fall guy and just enough distance from any actual crimes to keep from getting caught.

That, and the witness for the DA, the one who was going to come forward with evidence that could potentially put him away forever, had just disappeared with his wife and three small children. Sumarokov had practically been begging for Saintly intervention. "Of course we're doin' the lord's work." Connor agreed easily, and for a moment, Murphy was hopeful. "And the lord demands we do it with rope!"

"That's it!" Murphy growled. He lunged for Connor, dropping his gun as he struck out in annoyance. Connor, never one to back down from a fight – especially one with his brother – lunged forward into Murphy, knocking him to the ground. They wrestled against each other for a long moment, each trying to push the other away with a slug and a kick while simultaneously grappling them into a headlock. "Ye and yer stupid fuckin' rope!"

"Fuck you!"

"Fuck you!"

"Fuck!" It would later be decided that only Connor and Murphy could carry on an argument consisting entirely of the word 'fuck' as they tried to beat the life out of each other. In the meantime, it took Sumarokov's goons only a few minutes to hear the echoes of a very frustrated Connor yelling "Fuck you and yer stupid fuckin' hair!" at his brother. As Victor eyed the door to the bar's kitchen, for he was sure that he'd been hearing some strange noises on the other side, Connor wished for once that he was not the one who was obviously more brilliant and thought about important things, like bringing rope.

That way he would have had something better to yell at Murphy about besides his hair, which Connor really didn't have a problem with in the first place. "Muh hair!?" Murphy growled, pausing with his fist midair. "What's wrong muh hair!?" Connor opened his mouth to reply, prepared to say something offensive, with the fabulous addition of the word 'fuck' thrown in, that he didn't really mean, when the door to the kitchen opened and Victor found the twins clad in their usual black shirts and jeans, lying one on top of the other with a fist raised and looking bruised. Connor and Murphy looked away from each other toward Victor and there was an exaggerated pause as the three stared between each other.

Then Victor came to his wits and yelled something in Russian.

Connor and Murphy pushed away from each other and rolled to the side, each grabbing their gun. Murphy was the first to have his at the ready, taking Victor out with two shots in the abdomen as Connor wrestled with loading his gun, having been far too occupied with his rope – _stupid Murphy, hiding the fuckin' rope_ – to have prepared for their coming killing spree. When Connor was ready, he fired a few shots into the bar before he came out, perfectly instep with Murphy, firing nonstop as each thug in the bar fell to the floor. Connor and Murphy couldn't help the feeling of pride that washed over them as gunned down at least a third of the Russians in that area.

They were doing important work and they were doing it well.

Then Murphy paused to reload his gun and just as Connor was surveying their handiwork, pulling a handful of pennies from his pocket and noticing that Alexander Sumarokov was not one of the bodies awaiting their customary last rites, something hard collided with the side of Connor's face. Connor fell back instantly, crashing into his brother. Murphy tightened his grip on his gun as they fell to the floor, angling his wrist to keep it from hitting the hard surface and jarring the gun from his hands, and aimed a shot for Sumarokov as he ran for the door. His first instinct was a kill shot, but as Sumarokov was the one they'd come for, and the twins always used an execution style kill for the boss, he shot him in the back of both of his knees and noted with satisfaction that Sumarokov crumbled to the floor.

Murphy pushed Connor aside, watching him haphazardly regain consciousness. Connor rubbed his head, wincing at the contact. "Well..." he coughed out. "Fuck me."

"Yes." Murphy agreed. "Fuck you. And yer fuckin' rope."

Murphy helped Connor to his feet and, after steadying him once or twice and helping Connor find his gun, they made their way to the other side of the bar, where Sumarokov was crying and praying in Russian as he tried to pull and push himself further away from the twins, leaving a trail of blood as he moved. Connor looked to his brother. "Shall we do this, then?" he asked.

"Aye." Murphy replied with a nod. Reaching forward, he turned Sumarokov around as he sat him up on his destroyed knees, ignoring his screams of agony and fear as they left him positioned. Taking a step back and placing their guns to the back of his head, they took a synchronized breath before they spoke together.

"_And shepherds we shall be. For thee, my lord, for thee. Power hath descended from Thy hand. Our feet may swiftly carry out Thy commands._" Sumarokov wasn't a religious man. He'd never attended church, he'd never read the bible. He'd never sung a hymn or prayed or done a christian deed in his life.

"_So we shall flow a river forth to thee._" He was born to the Russian mafia. He had never needed to until that moment. He'd done a lot of things in his life that were evil, but at that moment, he was regretting them. He wished he'd done things differently. He'd wished he had lived a different life. "_And teeming with souls shall it ever be._" But mostly...

"_In Nomeni Patri Et Fili_-" Mostly, he just didn't want to die. "_Spiritus Sancti._"

Two bullets cut through the air at the exact same time, slicing into back of Alexander Sumarokov's skull and exiting through his eye sockets. It was a bloody mess that, had the Saints not been as steely and resolved as they were, might have given them reason pause as his body crumpled once again to the floor, dead. The Saints had completed their mission, for the moment. They pulled the crosses hanging on long chains from under their shirts as they began to go about the room, turning over bodies and crossing their arms, closing their eyes. It was quiet work, sacred work.

Then Murphy realized that something was missing. He growled and turned to his brother in annoyance. "Oy! You fuckin' retard!" he yelled. "Ya dropped all the pennies!"

* * *

Scarlett rubbed her head at the aching that had begun the second the two men had entered the bar hours earlier. It was hard to stake out a favorite restaurant of the Russian mafia without them knowing them it under normal circumstances. It was even harder with some sort of law enforcement watch already on the place. She had resorted to waitressing and eventually quit two hours later, when a mafioso who called himself Chips smacked her ass and forced her to sit on his lap. She'd slapped him in response, which was never really a good move with a career criminal, and had been received her own slapping in return.

Five of them, actually. Just before they turned her over the bar and spanked her.

She'd eventually been escorted from the establishment later that night with a rough shove from the back door and she'd stumbled back to her makeshift apartment in an abandoned warehouse to lick her wounds and ice her backside. But, she'd reflected, it could always have been worse. Besides, she'd at least had time to plant that bug.

The one she'd been listening to constantly ever since. She'd barely had time to shower or pee. An illegal bug placed in a favorite hangout could yield a lot of results in police investigations, which could never be used in court or directly connected to Sumarokov himself with the ends of prosecution. She'd been making a list, nevertheless. Rape, murder, drugs, women. The list went on and on. Mostly, it was people who owed him money, people who gambled too much. People who, he'd decided, didn't gamble enough and should simply be made to gamble more, one way or another. Sumarokov liked the ponies.

Scarlett had a list of tips a mile long to turn in to the FBI as soon as her business there was concluded. Which, she thought, was likely to be soon.

She'd been following a lead, based entirely on nothing and that she was sure she'd conjured out of thin air from sheer hope, that the vigilante brothers known as the Saints of South Boston hadn't actually died in Hoag prison two years ago. After her father's funeral, she'd begun investigating her sisters' whereabouts, expecting them to end in Boston as her father's had.

The two were always together, planning a job or finishing another, or just getting ready and pulling one over on Scarlett. Elizabeth and Martin had always been thick as thieves – the saying made her chuckle quietly to herself.

Thick as thieves, indeed.

Instead, her sister had left no trace. Elizabeth Connolly, dark haired and brooding, sarcastic and passionate about nothing but the job, had disappeared entirely. She was absent. The universe itself had swallowed her up. Scarlett gave up looking for Elizabeth the day she'd read in the papers that the Saints had been attacked in prison and had been brutally stabbed to death with a shiv made from a toothbrush. Another account had been that one of the brothers had gotten an infection from his wounds and died and the other, in grief over the loss of his beloved twin, had taken his own life in the night. A reporter friend of hers had said that Romeo, their accomplice in the deaths of Concezio Yakavetta, a man known only as "The Roman", and a handful of Yakavettas' goons, attacked the guard in their hospital room, stole his gun, and took out his two friends in a blaze of gunfire because he finally got fed up with being called a spic.

As to the official report, Scarlett was unimpressed with the standard press statement that the brothers had "passed on in the night due to unforseeable and regrettable circumstances." Well, that and the skeptical, leering expression of the man who'd examined her press credentials for a tabloid whose most recent issue had run a human interest piece on a man who was celebrating his eight year anniversary and the birth of his third child with his domestic house cat, Fifi.

The closest to the truth that Scarlett could get would be to say that they'd gone the way of her older sister and the universe had swallowed them up as well. It'd taken a pretty penny to buy off the coroner and hospital doctor for their statements of "one minute they were alive and the next they weren't" with an uncaring shrug.

This meant, to Scarlett at least, that there was more to the death of the Saints of South Boston than met the eye.

And maybe more to her sister's disappearance, as well.

That had been two years ago, though, and Scarlett had spent untold hours listening to illegal surveillance until, at last, it seemed that she'd struck gold. Two Irish gentlemen were suddenly heard on the bug she'd placed in a Russian bar. The accent had been a welcome relief. The second she'd heard it, she'd left the old warehouse she'd been squatting in and made her way to her car to meet them at the bar. Hopefully, she thought to herself, this would be it and she wouldn't have to stalk whatever big time mafia sleazebag managed to make the papers this week. Then she had heard them arguing, about rope of all things, and she was positive that she'd been mistaken.

Pulling up across the street from the bar, she parked and glared at the quiet picture of the street, the firefight that had gone on inside only moments ago unknown to the outside world. Steam rose from the vents in the street and lights flickered, just as they always did. Scarlett stared at it for a long moment, debating whether she should enter or not. The two men inside, men she'd spent months pursuing, had gunned down an entire bar and executed a major mob boss. It wasn't exactly the safest situation to be carelessly walking into.

And why would her father have sent her to find two men who'd decided it was their calling from god to kill all the evil men in the world? Men who, Scarlett thought to herself, were not entirely unlike her father. For as long as Scarlett could remember, Martin Winslowe had been a member of their world, though perhaps with a slightly different trade than Sumarokov, and Scarlett by extension. She took a deep breath, unsure of exactly what she was doing.

She reached into the back seat of her inconspicuous Chevy and grabbed a bag, taking a quick look inside to make sure she had a gun if she should need it. She sighed, taking one last look at the bar before numbly opening the car door and stepping out, closing it quietly behind her. Her eyes scanned the street as she crossed it, looking for shadows in the darkness, anything that could mean danger on a dark night, which was basically everything on a mafia street in the middle of New York City. She was literally taking her life in her sweaty, clammy hands as her fingers gingerly closed around the handle to the front door. She had to force herself to turn it, to push the door open, to step inside quietly as two men in black made their way around the room, crossing themselves and laying pennies on the eyes of the dead. Her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the blood and she swallowed back against the bile that rose in her throat. "I see you found the pennies." she said, her voice sounding uncertain to her ears – though she knew it better than most people.

Immediately, she found herself looking down the barrels of two silencers as they jumped at the sound of her voice. She screamed and stumbled backwards against the door, dropping her bag and holding out her hands. There were few things she found so utterly disarming as having a gun in her face. She barely liked guns at all. "I'm not armed!" she screamed. The two men looked at her in confusion for a long moment before sharing a look. Seeming to think the better of blowing her brains out – which Scarlett found she was extremely thankful for – they put the guns to down to their sides, though she noticed they didn't forget them altogether.

"Sorry, lass. Ye surprised us." the one with lighter hair, whom she recognized as Connor, told her, his eyes flickering around to see if there was anyone else in the bar. "Anyone else with ya?"

"No. No, it's just me." Scarlett answered quickly. Connor nodded, his gaze still not resting fully on Scarlett and instead drifting down to the floor where her bag had fallen and spilled open. The darker haired one, who Scarlett knew must be Murphy, was eying her from top to bottom critically. Something that Scarlett reluctantly admitted to herself made her very nervous.

"Now who might ye be?" he asked, his tone not entirely unfriendly, but still not welcoming as he watched her carefully. Scarlett opened her mouth to speak, not quite sure what to say.

"I'm... uh..." she began.

"Who cares?" Connor asked suddenly, gaining the attention of both Murphy and Scarlett. He appeared to practically have tears in his eyes as he turned to his brother. "Look, Murph!" he commanded, directing Murphy's attention to her spilled bag. "She brought rope!"

* * *

Okay, some notes for the story. Basically, I had started the second chapter earlier, only to discover that my character's got a little ahead of me and the scene that I was writing wasn't really meant for the second chapter, but some point later on in the story. Be warned, the rating'll definitely be going up. If you want me to up it now, as I did shamelessly exploit darling Connor and his embarassing love for rope with a slightly excessive use of the F word, just let me know.

Also, I have no idea where this is going. XD I wrote the summary based entirely on the first chapter, which sort of spilled out of my head once I got the first line down on paper. I did write out a basic idea/plans for the story, but after that scene that isn't actually from the second chapter, taking into account what happened in the first chapter, and then what my characters MADE me write in this second one, I no longer have any insights to offer. The story has taken a life of it's own. I'm revising the summary and going back over my notes and I cannot be blamed for what happens here or how it turns out.


	3. Yer Not Squeamish, Are Ye?

Argh! I'm soooo sorry this took so long to get posted. I got slammed for a while and then I've had this half done for the past week, but I didn't get around to finishing it until this morning. I've been reading _It's Always Something_ by Gilda Radner for the past few days, which is a good, impossibly sad book, so I desperately needed a little escapism. I'm not sure I like how this chapter went, because it all seemed just a little too easy for me, but I procrastinated on it a lot and I had a hard time picturing the situation and then writing it. So I guess I'll leave whether it's a good third chapter up to you wonderful, fabulous, amazing, sweet, lovable readers who rock my world on a daily basis and make it worth getting up in the morning. (In other words, in case it didn't come across already, _thank you wonderful people for reading this far!_)

**Yer Not Squeamish, Are Ye?**

There's something disconcerting about interrupting the closing half of a holy mission to rid the world of evil men. It could easily have been staring down a silencer – though Scarlett would contend that she'd been held at gun point before and it hadn't affected her beyond a dislike for guns and the slime that use them – or perhaps that of the two brothers standing before her, she got distinct impression that one probably wanted to shoot her, while the other... well... Scarlett wasn't quite sure what to make of Connor and his questionable love of rope, or the fact that while he cradled it gleefully in his arms, he had also been sizing her up since her sudden appearance as he was laying pennies on the eyes of a fat Russian with a goatee and a tattoo of Lucille Ball. Either way, if she had had the ability to predict their movements beyond the desperate hope to find them and a disturbingly easy ability to stalk and eavesdrop on every big bad thug in the continental US when both federal and state law enforcement couldn't seem to make a charge stick, she would probably have chosen a different entrance.

One without guns _or_ twelve dead Russians.

Instead, she found herself in the awkward position of trying to decide what to do or say next as Murphy's eyes perused her body for hidden threats of any kind – she wondered if he'd catch on to the knife in her boot – while Connor, still cradling the momentarily useless object, inwardly debated whether she was a threat and how to handle her. The fact also remained that there were still three men left who required attending before their task was fully completed, and while they had never been the types to have performance anxiety before, they had no reason to trust the woman before them. "Ya still haven't answered muh question." Murphy said, noticing how she flinched ever so slightly from the sound of his voice, though she managed to keep it from showing too obviously. Had Murphy not been so attuned to people's reactions when there was the possibility of being shot, he could reasonably have missed it. He also noticed that something about the way she was leaning on her right leg was off, which could mean a weapon.

He was both pleased and annoyed to know, through a shared look between the two, that Connor had also noticed. "Question?" Scarlett asked, her mind faltering for an instant. "Oh." She remembered just as Connor turned to her to repeat his brother's question. "I'm Scarlett Evans. I've been looking for you." Connor frowned.

"Lookin' for us? Whatcha been lookin' for us for?" Connor asked.

"Aye." Murphy added. "We're nobody important. Jus' a coupla Irishmen."

"Oh. Okay. So you're just couple of nice Irishmen with matching tattoos that just took out a room of Russian mafia?" Scarlett replied. "Because that sounds a lot like something the Saints would do."

"Dun't ye know we're dead?" Connor asked her, inwardly amused. Scarlett supposed it was foolish to respond that they looked pretty damn good for a couple dead guys. "And how'd ye find us, anyhow?" She sighed.

"Mostly blind luck." Scarlett admitted, carefully hiding whatever nervousness she felt behind a mask of, if not confidence, then at least the fact that she'd actually managed to accomplish what she'd set out to do. "I couldn't really get an exact story on how the two of you had died. Everyone told me something different. I... I was hoping that maybe.... it meant that it wasn't true."

"Why would ye be hopin' that?" Connor asked, frowning. Scarlett took a deep breath to steel herself.

"I'm supposed to find you." Scarlett told them. "I mean, I was told to find you. I need your help."

"Help? With what?" Murphy asked. Scarlett looked between the two brothers, half wondering exactly what the hell she was doing there in the first place and the other half wondering how to respond a question she didn't know how to answer.

"I'm... not... exactly sure." she admitted slowly, to the twins, and her own, confusion. She sighed. "Look, you have stuff to do. I can wait until you're finished." Murphy's face twitched in curiosity.

"Wait until we're finished?" he asked.

"What's the matter, lass? Yer not squeamish, are ya?" Connor asked her with a smirk. Scarlett glared in his direction.

"_No._" she said with a scowl as Murphy chuckled to himself. "It'd just... be easier to explain without all the dead bodies around."

"Did ye hear that, Murph?" Connor asked, turning to his brother. "She dun't like the dead bodies."

"Aye." Murphy replied with a grin, unable to resist. "'Tis weird, isn't it?"

"Fuckin' strange." Connor agreed. Murphy suddenly gave Scarlett a serious look.

"We trust ye won't be leavin' us, now?" Murphy asked.

"Won't do somethin' stupid ye might regret, either." Connor added. Scarlett looked between the brothers, her gaze lingering on each twins' face long enough to memorize each curve and wrinkle.

"Oh, I'm not going anywhere." Scarlett agreed. Connor looked her at critically, his mouth still turned up in a grin.

"We have yer word on that?" he asked. "We can trust ye?" Her answer wouldn't have matter anyway. Connor didn't plan on trusting her until he knew the full story. That didn't change the fact that they weren't finished.

"I make it a point not to fuck over guys with guns." Scarlett returned. The twins both grinned in turn before stowing their weapons. Turning to go back to their work, Murphy said something quietly to his brother.

"Almost a pity, isn't it?" he asked, his thoughts lingering on the length of her legs.

"Aye." Connor agreed with a small grin.

Their work wasn't quick business. Scarlett was surprised to find they took their time. It was almost mesmerizing to watch them as they moved, taking great care as they whispered prayers and laid shining copper pennies on the eyes of those who were once men. There was something curious about twins, how everything they did was exactly mimicked by the other brother; every motion, every gesture, every expression. It was almost elegant, like some kind of macabre ballet, with so much obvious strength and quiet poise that Scarlett had trouble reconciling the image. They were two people, identical but somehow separate. Two parts of the same whole.

It was unsettling to see two men who could easily be mistaken as angels in the luminous light of the dawning sun crossing the arms of a fallen Russian they'd just returned to their maker. Like it was the most natural thing in the world to them, to be doing what they were doing.

Connor and Murphy rose at the same time, sharing a look Scarlett couldn't read. It was the dwindling quiet that echoes from souls whose bodies have reached the end of their lives, a screaming silence to end all silence. The brothers had never had a moment of regret. They had never had a second of hesitation in their work. Since that day, so long ago now, while they stayed at the station and waited for the press to leave, they knew they were doing what must be done. They knew they were doing what they were meant to do.

And they knew they were meant to do so together, as brothers.

A single look can say so many things in the fraction of a second. The looks the brothers shared said everything. They always had.

"Now," Connor said with a fulfilled sigh. "Who's hungry?" And it was that simple.

Scarlett followed the brothers in an awed silence, watching their demeanor go from serious to relaxed, then to joking. She wasn't sure what she was doing or where she was following them to, but they left out the back door and led her to a car. She paused as she stared it, unable to shake the feeling of uncertainty in her heart. She glanced back at the restaurant, her eyes lingering on the brickwork, wondering at the feeling of uneasiness. Could she trust these two men?

Better yet, did she even have a choice? "Now, lass, perhaps ye better be explainin' yerself." Scarlett looked up to see Connor glancing at her in the rear view mirror. But what was she supposed to explain? She was barely sure of anything herself. At least, she thought, explaining what little she knew this way had one advantage. She didn't have to look anyone in the eyes. Normally, it wasn't something that would bother Scarlett. She had enough guts to track down and follow everyone who'd managed to make the news and had found two of the most notorious criminals in recent history. Still, in that moment... she just couldn't find it in herself..

"My father's name was Martin Winslowe. He was a professional thief." Scarlett began. "My whole life, he was always busy. In the middle of a job. He and Elizabeth – my half sister – they used to work together a lot. They'd see a mark or they'd have a job, and..." And it didn't matter what she wanted, or what her mother needed, or even what had happened to her brother, Charlie. What had mattered was the job. _Always_ the job. "Anyway, two years ago I get this phone call from the hospital that he's been hurt and he doesn't have long." It was funny how easy recounting it was. "He died right after I got there." Scarlett said, unconsciously letting the words hang there in the air. It may have been easy to say, but it still made her numb.

"We're sorry." Connor told her, compassion in his voice as he watched her. Murphy nodded in agreement.

"Aye, we are." Murphy said. "But what does that have to do with us?" he asked her impatiently, earning himself a glare from his brother. "What? It's a good question."

"The last things he said to me before he died were... to find Elizabeth." _Find your sister..._ "And to find the Saints." Scarlett answered, looking at the front seats. "Martin wasn't a religious man, so the closest thing I can figure is that he was talking about the two of you." she finished.

"Aye." Connor murmured, taking it all in. "We see what ye mean." He glanced at his brother as he went to turn a corner. "But why would yer Da be pointin' ye after us?"

"I was hoping you might know that." Scarlett answered, scooting up in her seat so that she was almost between the two brothers. "Did you guys know him or have any sort of business with him?"

"We didn't know yer Da." Murphy replied, reaching into his coat to pull out a cigarette.

"So ye been lookin' for us, then?" Connor asked. "How, exactly, did ye find us?" It was a question both Connor and Murphy had been especially curious about. They'd been surprised two years ago to find that Agent Smecker had actually been alive and that he'd orchestrated his death in order to begin setting up a network in which the brothers could operate. It had been beyond their imagination to find that, upon arriving in Hoag, there had already been a plan for their escape in place and that, just as easily as Smecker had arranged his own death, so had he done for them. It wasn't just unlikely, however, that anyone would penetrate this network to determine their whereabouts, it was damned near impossible.

Smecker was thorough. There was no one better, in fact. That this girl had tracked them down meant that she must be very, _very_ good. "Oh... _that_." Scarlett said with a quiet chuckle to herself. She had to admit it, she was a little bit proud. Her efforts to find them had paid off, even if it was due mostly to luck and perseverance. "Well, after your supposed deaths at the Hoag, the trail went pretty cold. Your bodies were buried in an unmarked grave in an undisclosed location of the city cemetery. There were some pretty extreme measures to avoid the press and your fans. Apparently, you're extremely popular." Scarlett said, her voice filled with irony. She saw the brothers share a wide, toothy grin at the comment.

It was always nice to hear that there were decent people in the world who approved of the work they were trying to accomplish.

Scarlett resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "So for the past two years, I've been tracking the open mafia related cases around the US. Trying to figure out where you might be whenever you make your next move. I started following Sumarokov a few weeks ago and managed to plant a bug in his favorite place." Connor put his foot on the brake, sharing a look with his brother before they both glared back at her with a serious expression.

"Ye mean ye just happened to find us by accident?" Murphy asked in disbelief. No, he thought. Surely it couldn't have been that simple.... right?

"Pretty much." Scarlett replied with a small grin. Their looks of surprise were priceless.

"Fuck." Murphy murmured, leaning back in his seat and.

"Aye." Connor agreed. "Fuck." He started driving again, his eyes darting from the road to the girl who'd practically planted herself in between him and his brother, his eyes on that small knowing smile of hers. It was an unprecedented situation. "What exactly is it ye want from us?" Murphy turned to look at Scarlett for her answer as Connor gazed at her in the rear view mirror.

"The things my father said..." _I tried hard this time... you have to fix it._ "I think Martin-" she paused. "I think my father was working on something. I don't know what it was, but I think it went wrong, and I think he wanted me to fix it." she told them. "I want your help to find the person who killed my father and finish... whatever he wanted me to do." It was as simple an answer as Scarlett could manage.

"And why should we help ye?" Murphy asked. Scarlett turned to look at him, surprise written on her face. She'd asked herself that same question over and over again for the past two years. Why should they help her? They had their own mission and they were trying to follow through on that mission while staying out of the reach of both the FBI and every criminal they were, or had, targeted. Why should they help the daughter of a thief, who only had a vague idea of what had happened to her father and knew even less about what it was he'd wanted her to do. For all Scarlett knew, Martin could have wanted her to finish a job for him.

It wasn't exactly a stretch of her imagination. "I don't know." Scarlett admitted. "I guess I was just hoping you would." Scarlett had always hated those girls who never had any answers and got what they wanted or needed by playing the damsel in distress. She liked to be strong, to know what was going on and to do things on her own. Now, more than ever, she appreciated what that felt like. She wished that she felt it then.

She felt the car come to a stop and looked around, noticing they hadn't driven far. It looked as though they'd just taken a couple circles around the block. Connor sent Murphy a furtive glance before he turned to face Scarlett as well. "We'll think it over." Connor said, nodding to his brother. Murphy gave a slight nod in agreement. Scarlett took a deep breath, wanting to protest but thinking the better of it.

"Where are ye stayin'?" Murphy asked her. Scarlett wasn't sure if she should answer. She wasn't an expert, but it didn't really like a good idea to give her address to two known killers. She sighed, pulling out a pen. She reached out for Murphy's hand to write her cell number on. Murphy shot Connor a triumphant grin and received a disapproving, almost jealous glare in return.

"You can call here." Scarlett told them. She checked for her car keys in her pocket and went to open her door. "Try not to take too long." she said, unable to keep her annoyance at the whole situation from slipping into her voice. They watched her exit the car and cross the street to her Chevy, unlocking it quickly and sliding in. She slammed the door closed behind her and started it up quickly, shooting them one last glance as she pulled into the road and began to drive away.

"What do ye think?" Connor asked, his eyes in the direction her car had headed. His mind was half focused on her story of her father, wondering what exactly her father had been into. Whatever it was, he thought, it had obviously gotten him killed. That didn't mean much in the criminal world, since people killed over so many things that didn't really matter in the end. Still, she had somehow managed to find them and had asked for their help.

"She'd be better off not gettin' involved." Murphy replied, his thoughts the same as his brother's.

"Aye." Connor agreed. "Dun't sound like she will, though."

"Do ye think she's telling the truth?" Murphy asked Connor, his brows furrowed. "She could be workin' for the cops. She could be usin' us, sendin' us after someone she wants dead."

"We need to talk to Smecker. See if he can find the Martin Winslowe she mentioned and if he has a daughter." Connor said. "Maybe he can tell us jus' what kinda trouble she's into, if she is who she says she is." Connor started the car again and turned a corner, heading in the direction of the old church they'd been staying at. "There is one thing we know fer sure, though." Murphy frowned at his brother in confusion.

"What's that?" he asked.

"The next time we go out, _I'm_ in charge of the rope."

**A/N:** So, what do we think folks? Good? Bad? Are you on the edge of your seat?

Well, whatever the case, thanks for reading, reviews are love, and I highly recommend _It's Always Something_ by Gilda Radner. It's a sad read as it's about just after she marries Gene and finds out she has cancer, but it's good.


	4. Aye Then We Talk To Smecker

Thank you, fabulous readers and reviewers!

So, I had some company over while I was writing this. I'd like to introduce you all to Frodo – he's the lovely neighborhood cat who likes to entertain his ladies friends on the roof directly above my bedroom. Who knew cats were so unromantic? Where's the dinner? Where's the nice night out? Where the sweet pillow talk, with things like "I'm so in love with you" or "You're the best I've ever had", or "Of course I'll still respect you"? If you're going to have a torrid affair, at least provide a little ambiance. Some atmosphere! At least turn on some damned porn movie techno in the background!

The next time I hear them, I'm turning on my Quick & Dirty Erotic Lounge CD. Because I'm awesome like that.

The really sad part is, however, that after three years, the first time I hear it I still always assume it's just two raccoons wrestling instead of the next door's mangy fur balls doing the nasty.

* * *

**Aye. Then We Talk To Smecker.**

Romeo was frustrated. No, actually, _frustrated_ was an understatement.

It wasn't like Romeo wasn't particularly attached to the boys and their holy mission. He'd grown fond of them over the past couple years. They were good friends to him, like family. He thought of them as his bumbling, completely without style, sidekicks. He'd even approved of their mission and set out to help them as much as possible.

It was the fact that he wasn't doing a whole hell of a lot of helping lately that was pissing him off. Getting his ass all shot up during the mission to take out the mysterious old man known as the Roman had taken it's toll. He'd wound up in the Hoag hospital wing with the brothers, hooked up to a ventilator and a dozen other machines. He was practically getting cable, for shit's sakes! He'd barely surfaced from the drug induced coma he'd been lost in while his body began to heal when that supermodel from the FBI had found a way to contact them on the inside with a plan. It had been a risky move, especially with Romeo's wounds, but as much as the brothers could be assholes at times and colorless all the time, he trusted them and their small network of friends, to which he now belonged.

So there he was, two years later, safe and sound in the hidden rooms between the insulated brick walls and the delicate, spiraling stained glass windows of the large Catholic church where they were currently in hiding, thanks to Uncle Sibeal. Safe and sound, Romeo thought with annoyance, and _bored_. It just wasn't fair that his injuries required extra rest and a stint with physical therapy before he was deemed fit to go back to his holy business of killing bad people. He'd had enough of this shit! He was three sessions away from leaving it all behind!

But could the boys wait for him?

No, frustration was not the right word to describe how he was feeling. Luckily, the boys should be returning at any moment with some beer, which he'd been waiting for all week. Priests were a funny thing in that they'd provide a guy on a mission to kill people with food and shelter, but they disapproved of things like smoking or alcohol or a friendly game of cards that involved cash changing hands based on the outcome of the game happening in the sacred halls of God. The only exception to these rules was the sacramental wine, but Romeo had backed off that idea after stern looks from the priest who'd settled them in and, more importantly, the boys, who'd spent the time since their release fine tuning their already razor sharp skills and proving that yes, Irishmen can indeed hold their liquor.

He reluctantly admitted to himself that he was a little in awe of their ability to do both at the same time without the one affecting the other.

Since Romeo had mostly been missing in action for the past two years due to his injuries, he was tasked with the more tedious side of playing support while the last of his physical therapy was completed. It wasn't until they'd left earlier that day that he realized he'd forgotten Connor's rope.

As if a general uselessness wasn't bad enough, he'd been stuck with a quiet, somewhat burly elderly priest who'd been a nurse in an African mission back in the early 50s to guide him through the physical therapy. The least the church could have done, after his selfless act of getting all shot up, was assign him a really hot nun. He didn't want any man's hands on any part of his body!

He shuddered as he thought of his first few sessions. He definitely needed that drink.

He stood and stretched the stiffness out of his limbs, glancing toward the door at the sound of voices in the hall. He heard the familiar bickering voices of Connor and Murphy long before he heard their feet stamping down the hall or saw the turning of the door knob. "Well, _I_ wasn't the one who wasn't fuckin' payin' attention." Murphy shot at his brother.

"_I_ wasn't the one who almost fuckin' shot his brother!" Connor growled back, practically kicking in the door. It wasn't exactly the reverence he'd always been taught to have in church, but when your arms are full of beer and cigarettes and your brother's are full of pizza, there aren't a whole lot of options. Murphy stumbled in after Connor, eyes fixed on the back of his head.

"_I_ didn't drop all ta fuckin' pennies!" Murphy replied, his eyes narrowed.

"'Tis wasn't that bad!" Connor said, walking over to a table and setting down the cases. Romeo's face twitched as they continued to argue, knowing they could go on for hours. No, Romeo thought. They'd be lost without him.

"Wasn't that bad?" Murphy asked. "_Wasn't that bad?_ We had to spend fifteen minutes tryin' ta find all those pennies. And what happens? A gurl walks in on us!" Now _that_ caught Romeo's attention.

"Girl?" he asked. "What girl?" This was absolutely the last time he was getting left behind on a mission. Especially if there were girls! Murphy huffed and set the pizza boxes on the nearest surface he could find, a musty chair that looked like it'd probably seen better days, and turned to Romeo.

"Sassy blond gurl. Walks in off the street and asks fer our help." Murphy told him. "Right in ta middle o' us sayin' last rites. Nearly shot her."

"Help?" Romeo repeated. "What's she need your help for? And how the hell did she find you anyhow?" _And why did I get stuck behind on the mission where all the fun things are happening?_

"It worked out jus' fine, didn't it?" Connor replied. "We finished ta job!" he said in triumph, pointing at his brother.

"Aye, that we did." Murphy said, that smirk of his spreading across his lips. "_I _even got her number." Connor's face darkened as he glared at his brother, the small part of his brain that wasn't focusing on his leaping across the room to throttle Murphy glad that they'd set down the pizza, smokes and beer so they'd be safe.

"_Ye_ fergot ta fuckin' rope!" Connor growled, tackling Murphy. Murphy threw him to the side and rolled over, straddling him to catch him in a stranglehold.

"It's yer fuckin' rope! Why the fuck would I remember yer fuckin' rope?" Murphy growled back. Connor shifted beneath Murphy's weight and landed a hit near his abdomen, knocking the wind out of him long enough to throw him aside.

"It's fuckin' useful, that's why! Why am I the only one ta think o' these things!" Connor grunted. Murphy landed another blow and the two continued to knock each other around the room. Romeo watched, half wondering if he should interfere and stop the fight long enough to at least get some information out of them and the other half of not willing to get pulled into it. It may have been silly, but Romeo had come to find over the years that he actually liked life. And stepping in between the MacManus brothers? Well, that was pretty much as close to death as one could get without actually dying.

Besides, with them busy trying to kill each other, he was free to take a seat and enjoy a slice of extra cheese pepperoni pizza with a beer.

And to think some people didn't believe in heaven.

The sound of the cap popping off the beer bottle was like a wake up call for Connor and Murphy. They paused mid-fight, staring in a frozen silence over at the source of the noise as Romeo took a long swig of the precious liquid. They easily released each other, climbing to their feet and scrambling to the small table that lived by the wall. Politeness was not something either twin observed as they both reached for a beer at the same time, pausing to glare in annoyance at each other, before brushing it off as easily as everything else and taking their first drink in a _very_ long time.

Their first few days out of Hoag, the only thing they'd wanted to do was get on with their work. Well, that, and have an ice cold beer at McGinty's. It was disheartening to hear from Smecker that neither was possible. As much as he approved of and supported their work, he wouldn't permit them to go anywhere until they were all fully healed. After all, who would do their work if anything should happen to them?

No, this was their mission, and Paul had found himself acting partially as their protector and partially as their keeper until they were ready. So, the doctor deemed they consume no liquor nor smoke a single cigarette. They'd reluctantly given in to Smecker and the doctor's orders, inwardly cursing them with something truly unpleasant until the moment they found themselves in now, holding a slightly chilled bottle in their hands and bringing it to their lips. The first sip was frothy, full of tastes and sensations that had seemed long forgotten to the boys. Now, though, they were beginning to remember. The cool feeling resting in their stomachs, the feel as it moved down their throats. It was almost as though they had been asleep for months and now, at last, they were finally waking up. They were getting their lives back.

There was just something indefinable about a bottle of beer, especially to an Irishmen.

The room was quiet for those first sacred gulps, each lost in his own distant world, before Connor brought them all back to reality. "Oi, Romeo. Ain't that muh rope?" The silence that passed over the room was awkward. Murphy rolled his eyes as Connor eyed the rope critically, while Romeo paused and scratched his head sheepishly.

"Uh, yeah, man. I had it all ready for ya, but...." Romeo was trying to think of another way to say, _I __forgot your rope. _Unfortunately, he just wasn't that creative.

"S'alright." Connor said, much to Murphy's surprise. "Got muhself some new rope. Much better than that." Murphy could hardly believe his ears. After all that fuss? After everything that had just happened? And he just... just... let it go that easily! Their unspoken truce in the name of beer was broken. Setting his bottle aside, Murphy leapt across the room at his brother, ignoring the sounds of unknown objects crashing to the floor as he prepared to give him a good thrashing.

The night wore on in a haze that any normal man would have had trouble with, but not Murphy or Connor, and Romeo was not far behind. They could handle their liquor without any real troubles and it was a while before the three found themselves passed out for the night, a day's work completed and the world made just a little bit safer. Not enough to satisfy Connor or Murphy, of course. In their dreams, they still found themselves in the midst of fights they'd already won, losing the ones they'd already lost. Death takes a toll on any man, be they the one taking a life or the one losing someone important. Death had taken three someones from them. Nothing could make them forget that.

Rocco had been a dear, dear friend, of course. He was one of their first after they'd come to south Boston. Connor and Murphy had stumbled down to McGinty's for a beer after a long day at the meat packing plant, tired and nearly ready for the day to be done with, to find Rocco hitting on one of the waitresses. At first, they couldn't believe it. Not because the waitress had been something special – Doc was always an excellent judge of people, but even he had not seen through Tracy – but because Rocco had been so goddamned _bad_ at it. It was a testament to Rocco's character, they'd later decided. He was an idiot, to be sure, but even in his own stupidity, he was still good intentioned. Tracy left McGinty's within days, but Rocco had stayed and the three had remained permanent fixtures at that bar for years. The best of friends.

Losing their father was something else entirely. How did you cope with losing someone so dear even once? But yet they had lost him twice. The first time, they'd been too young to know, to understand what had happened. Why he had gone away. They had just gotten him back, though. It simply wasn't right. For a man like Noah MacManus to die meant that maybe, just maybe, there really wasn't justice in the world. Or if there was justice, then it was so far out of balance that not even God himself was able to bring it all back into focus.

And perhaps that was why they were there – perhaps that was why God had sent them on their mission.

It was a heavy load to bare, but the brothers did it all the same. First Rocco, then Greenley, then their father. In their dreams, it haunted them. It replayed over and over again, enough to make a man go mad, but Murphy and Connor refused to let it. They had a job to do. They had a mission. They couldn't afford to lose sight of that, even if they were caught by the police or had to be bandaged up for months on end until they were considered well enough to go with their work. Some things had to go right in the world. Truth and justice _had_ to prevail. Or else.... or else....

Or else, what was the fucking point?

Murphy was the first to resurface, one blue eye blinking open warily from the dream world he so desperately wanted to escape. He flinched at the light pouring in through the stained glass windows, sharp oranges and reds immediately meeting his gaze. He could feel the warmth from the sun beating down on the side of the old church, heat magnifying through the windows. It was a welcome change from the endless chill that seemed to inhabit his body over the past year. An unrelenting cold that had seeped through to his bones and formed an icy core in his soul. He was a changed man from two years ago.

He loved his brother, understood his brother completely. They were two parts of the same whole. One person, split into two bodies. They always had been. A single look could say a million things at once that Connor and Murphy had never in their lives had to speak aloud to one another. It was just there, an intrinsic part of their being. They loved each other completely, would do anything or give anything up for each other. There was nothing in the world that could keep them apart.

But Connor knew that Murphy had grown distant and Murphy knew that it was understood, that on some level Connor felt it too. The losses had been great. Connor was the stalwart brother, who thought about things first and made a plan and, Murphy reluctantly admitted to himself, even though most of the time it was bumbling, it had always worked. But Murphy was different.

He was hardy, yes. He was strong. He was confident, reliable. Murphy could survive, he knew how. They both did. He just didn't shake the feeling as easily. Connor could move on a different level, because it was necessary to think and plan and go forward despite what he was feeling. Murphy's was a soul that, despite being pulled forward by necessity or his brother's insistence, could somehow stand still. He felt the pain more deeply, could not move past it so easily. It weighed on his mind so heavy at times that Murphy felt like the world was crushing him.

Connor made it okay. He was the only thing that did. Without either brother there to balance the other out, they both knew without really needing to know that they would be lost. So much had happened in the past ten years that Murphy was beginning to make his peace with it. This was the way it was. The way it would be. They would fight for truth or justice, or for the innocent, or just because there were too many fucking evil men in the world and somebody had to have the balls to do what needed to be done, and people would be lost.

People would be lost.

The thought hung in the air like the smoke from his cigarette as he took a long drag. He took his time exhaling, basking in the feeling of a freedom he'd missed for so long. People would be lost.

But, he thought, not Connor. That was a loss he refused to accept, that he refused to let happen.

What had brought them to this moment, he wondered. Was it the bar fight all those years ago? Chekov coming for them the very next day? Was it their coming to Boston? Or was this just meant to be all along?

Whatever the case, there they were. He frowned as took another long drag, his eyes straying to the phone number scribbled on his hand. A strange woman, named Scarlett Evans, happens to find them and asks for their help. For what, exactly? He looked around for a pen and wrote the number down on the corner of a pizza box, the only acceptable surface he could find. He stood up and stretched, headed for the bathroom to relieve himself.

One thing was sure, Murphy thought as he closed the door. They had come a long way from their loft in Boston.

Connor woke at the sound of Romeo's deafening snore and was disturbed to find that Romeo had passed out by him and had rolled over in his sleep, throwing an arm around his waist and pulling him close. He was even more disturbed at Romeo's occasional promises of love and "Ooooh, yeah, baby. Do that real slow......" in his ears. He wondered for a long moment where he'd left his gun and what, exactly, he was going to do with the body.

He gave Romeo a good shove and pushed him away, feeling satisfied at the _thud_ that meant he'd collided rather sharply with the wall. Amazingly, Connor found that Romeo was still in a deep sleep. "Not so rough, baby. Gotta be gentle...." he murmured blearily. Connor shook his head at the drool escaping Romeo's mouth and the look of perfect contentment on the man's face. He had problems.

Serious fucking problems.

Connor noticed his brother's absence immediately. It felt like there was a void in the room. Something was missing. He found the freshly opened pack of cigarettes and pulled one out, lighting it easily. It was a job well done. Eight years in Ireland, letting the memories of the past slip away idly as though nothing had ever happened, and two years spent recovering from wounds. Some days he thought he could still feel the fire in his leg from that the gun fight with his father back in Boston, or the wounds that had found him when they had gone after the Roman. It was a phantom pain from injuries long past healed, though Connor knew they meant something deeper.

It was a dull throbbing beneath the surface that he had learned to ignore. The pains of the past. Only the present and the future mattered. He'd always believed that. Lately he'd just had more chances to put that belief into practice. He had to think, to plan. He'd been staying in close touch with Smecker since their release from Hoag. Not that he'd had any choice at first, since he'd been bandaged up and couldn't do much, but they'd been preparing a list for the past six months and gathering information. They had a series of jobs all planned out. Connor had explored the news and any state or federal case records he somehow managed to get his hands on and had picked the most volatile targets, men so evil that death was the only option. He'd consulted with Murphy after his initial list and they'd fine tuned it more closely, using information they'd received from Smecker to plan out where and when they'd hit each target.

It was the present that mattered, Connor reminded himself. He and his brother and Romeo and their mission.

And this girl, he reminded himself. His eyes had found the phone number scribbled across the pizza box. He couldn't help the smirk that crossed his features as he thought back to their meeting in the restaurant. It wasn't often they were interrupted in the middle of a job, though he admitted to himself that he'd found her to be... pretty. A welcome interruption.

He'd known that Murphy had practically been itching to pull the trigger at first and that, more than likely, Murphy would never trust Scarlett. He didn't blame him. It was more than likely that Scarlett was there to kill them both. It wasn't a leap to think that someone the twins had crossed had found out they were still alive and wanted them both really, _really_ dead. Though Connor, himself, tended to err on the side that Smecker was infallible in faking people's deaths and relocating them. Eunice Bloom was a prime example of that.

But if, Connor allowed himself to think, it turned that she was who she said she was and that she did, in fact, need their help, who were they to turn down a soul in need of guidance? Isn't that what they were there for, after all? To protect the innocent and to destroy evil men? And suppose they did turn her down – what would she do then? Connor scoffed.

Probably go after her father's past, all guns blazing, and get herself killed, or something worse. She wasn't small or scrappy and Connor doubted that she had a truly tough bone in her body. She talked a good game, but he'd be willing to guess it was to hide something she'd rather the world not see.

She was a lot like Murphy in that way. And maybe, he thought, she was a lot like himself. "Ooooh, baby, you're so _hot_." He could only hope she wasn't like Romeo. He didn't think he could take that.

Connor heard the toilet flush and he glanced toward the door as Murphy came out, hair ruffled from sleep and taking a drag. It was the first time in two years that he thought he saw a little bit of life returning to his twin's face. It brought a feeling of quiet relief to his mind. Yes, Connor thought. It was the present that mattered now. "Oi, what are you starin' at?" Murphy asked after a long moment, tired of being watched by his brother.

"I didn't think yer mug could get any uglier." Connor joked. "Turns out I was wrong." Murphy scoffed.

"What are ye talkin' about? I'm fuckin' handsome." Murphy replied. He turned threateningly toward Connor. "Now dun't make me do somethin' ye'll regret."

"Sorry, Murph. Already hid the rope." Connor said proudly. "'Tis safe and sound."

"Oooh, you like how Romeo does it....."

"What the fuck was that?" Murphy asked, glancing toward Romeo's sleeping form.

"I dun't think we wanna know." Connor replied with a shake of his head. "Breakfast?"

"Aye." Murphy agreed. "Then we call Smecker." He gave Romeo a kick to wake him up, forgetting for an instant that Romeo was a creature who could sleep better than the dead. He gave up after Romeo slept through another kick and followed Connor out, putting out their cigarettes in a stray glass cup for an ashtray as they left.

* * *

**a/n:** Okay, so I'd gotten almost no sleep before writing (I spent basically an entire night replaying Pink Martini's _Hey Eugene!_ and _Hang On Little Tomato_ over and over on my walkman) and I actually wrote most of it in between classes yesterday, so I'm a little worried I got a little too wordy or Miss Piggy-like (What? It's plot exposition. It has to go somewhere!). I mean, I was hesitant to go straight to the action, because while that is my favorite part of the story, it doesn't always give you a sense of the characters. So tell me what you think?

And yes, I realize I've probably done the rope joke to death by now. So from now on, I'll try to restrain myself (teehee!) in the future.


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